Phillip
Chapman (August 2, 2005)- When The Muppet Show
Season 1 releases on DVD next Tuesday it will be a monumental day for Muppet
fans. With more than 300 million people watching each week, in the late
1970’s Time Magazine named The Muppet Show "the most popular
television entertainment on earth." Unfortunately,
in the United States the show has had limited TV runs during the past ten
years. Either the show aired on channels few received (like Odyssey) or
only a few of the episodes aired (as on Nickelodeon).

Thankfully,
it is now a new day. The Muppet Show is finally preserved and restored
as a season set. And while some may see the Muppets as unhip or nostalgic,
it cannot be ignored that the Muppet Show Season 1 has climbed to #1 on
Amazon’s
Top 100 DVDs, an impressive feat for any release, much less a family
show that premiered 29 years ago. The folks at Disney are elated with
the pre-orders and plan on releasing Season 2 in the next eight-to-twelve
months with the other seasons to follow.

OVERALL
PRESENTATION

The menus
are bright and colorful. At first I didn’t like the “moving
block” design, but it has grown on me. The blocks rotate and reveal
other characters behind them. New commentary with the actual puppets is
provided by Statler (Steve Whitmire) and Waldorf (Dave Goelz) on each
of the main menus. On the main menu The Muppet Show theme is playing in
the background. The submenus, however, just play instrumental tracks.
It would have been better to feature classic Muppet audio tracks here
as well.

All twenty-four
episodes are included with original
openings and UK Skits not commonly seen in the United State. The original
openings are a particular delight to fans as they have not been seen on
television since the 1980's. (Second season openings were used on first
season shows in recent American reruns.) A
“Muppet Studios” logo backed by an eight-second theme interlude
is shown before each episode begins. There are no chapters within each
episode. Having a chapter every 2-4 minutes would have been a nice addition.
As expected the original Zoot ending (shown on the left) is not included
on this set. Instead, these episodes feature a shot of Zoot from the 1980's
used on the HIT, Henson International Television, broadcasts.

The
original first season closing scene.

The
closing scene shown on the DVD set.

It should
be noted that the first two episodes were originally shot dramatically
differently than they aired and are presented here. The first two episodes,
Juliet Prowse and Connie Stevens, were reworked a few months after they
were shot. Many scenes were cut and others were added to these episodes.
While it would have been nice to have had the originals here for comparison
sake, it's understandable that the final broadcast versions are included
in this set. Learn more about the original,
unaired Juliet Prowse pilot in our episode guide.

Unfortunately,
due to music licensing issues the following songs are not included on
this release:

For undisclosed
reasons, the two Newsman bits from the Joel Grey episodes have also been
cut. It is speculated that this is due to a difference in master tapes
since the Newsman pieces were reworked (adding glasses and a different
voice) for the first few episodes.

VIDEO
AND AUDIO

Considering
the age of the source material, the video quality is nothing short of
amazing. Colors are bright and vibrant. You’ll see details on each
character that you may have never noticed before. On some Muppet Show
releases in the past the colors have been over saturated. Thankfully,
this isn’t the case here. The Muppet Show has never looked so good.
Even though the soundtracks are in mono (as they were originally recorded),
the frequency range is very broad with crisp highs and clean bass.

BONUS
FEATURES

MUPPET
SHOW PITCH REEL: One of the great things about this release for
die-hard fans is the inclusion of the original pitch reel produced for
TV executives at CBS. The pitch features Leo (from Muppet Meeting Film
fame) selling the show to CBS executives telling them how the show will
make them rich and famous. When Leo begins he is calm and relaxed, but
as he continues he becomes excited and gets more and more crazy.

Leo
selling The Muppet Show as
presented on the DVD set.

Kermit's
appearance and climatic line is totally removed from the pitch reel.

Unfortunately,
the closing line with Kermit has been cut from this release. In the unedited
version at the end of the three-minute pitch, Kermit appears from off-screen
behind a CBS logo and describes the chaos by declaring, “What the
hell was that?” The pitch is still quite enjoyable, but it looses
a lot of its punch with the climatic line removed. This cut was not related
to the parody of the CBS logo behind Kermit, rather Disney's aim for a
"family-friendly" release.

GAG
REEL: It’s
not really a gag reel: these bits are a few of The Muppet Show promos
that stations would show throughout the week to advertise the upcoming
program. These are short 5-10 seconds clips mentioning to tune in and
the particular guest. For fans that have seen it all, there will be some
new surprises in this brief montage. It would have been great if promos
for all 24 episodes were included though.

THE
MUPPET SHOW - SEX AND VIOLENCE: The second Muppet Show pilot
appears here uncut. It may be a surprise to some to find out that the
host is Nigel the conductor, not Kermit. I
would have preferred that the first pilot be on Season 1 and the second
pilot on Season 2. The quality on the transfer is not as crisp as the
Season 1 episodes, but it’s still quite enjoyable. Find out more
about The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence in our episode
guide.

MUPPET
MORSELS: This feature is available for all 24 episodes and includes
extensive trivia and additional information. Think of it as captioning
on steroids. The information is so extensive in fact, that the trivia
bits are almost continuous, one after another. While not all of the information
is about the Muppets, it's obvious that a lot of care went into this particular
area. You may notice a few mistakes and grammatical errors here and there,
but the information is presented in an informative and straightforward
manner. The running count of Miss Piggy's karate chops was especially
a hit in our house.

The Jim Henson
Retrospective that was originally planned for the DVD was not included
due to DVD space limits. Hopefully this will be featured with Season 2.
At last year's "Muppets, Music and Magic: Jim Henson's Legacy"
event, interviews about Jim Henson and The Muppet Show were conducted
with Craig Shemin, Jerry Juhl, Jerry Nelson, Dave Goelz, Carroll Spinney,
Michael Frith and other Henson employees and fans.

PACKAGING

The
packaging of the box set is nice, but not spectacular. It should be noted
that there are two versions of this box set out there, one has a “fuzzy”
green cover and the other is smooth like the rest of the box. While Disney
gets props for taking a unique perspective on the cover, the inner pictures
(from the 1990’s) were selected without much forethought. Even if
they weren’t first season pictures, there are hundreds of Muppet
Show era photos that could have been used for a much more consistent look.
I’m not a fan of the disc arrangement inside of the box. The discs
overlap each other meaning that you have to sometimes remove two discs
in order to get to the one you want.

CONCLUDING
THOUGHTS

While
it's most unfortunate that five episodes and the pitch reel were edited
that is the extent of my quibbles about this set. The Brian Henson show
intros produced in 1999 would have been nice additions, but they were
not mandatory. Even with the few cuts, The Muppet Show Season 1 is an
amazing DVD collection with over ten hours of material. It should be your
number one Muppet purchase for the foreseeable future. At least, until
Season 2 arrives next year.

Fan site Muppet Central created by Phillip Chapman. Updates by Muppet
Central Staff. All Muppets, Bear characters are copyright
of The Muppets Studio. Sesame Street characters are copyright of Sesame
Workshop.
Fraggle Rock, Creature Shop and similar likenesses are copyright
of The Jim Henson Company.
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